The downtown Rutland building comprising 9-13 Evelyn St. has been purchased and is undergoing a new look.

Evelyn Street is about to get more colorful.

Shawn and Jamie Pemrick have bought the building at 9-13 Evelyn St., the main structure on the block, and are in the middle of renovating with plans of filling the mostly vacant spaces.

They are also giving it a bright paint job — described by the Downtown Rutland Partnership as “a throwback to what might have been seen in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury section.”

The Pemricks plan three apartments, space for Shawn Pemrick’s photography studio and some sort of retail operation. Jamie Pemrick said she will not move her Trace of Lace bridal boutique from North Main Street to the site.

“We’ve already moved it once and we’re not doing that again,” she said. “We’re happy with what we’ve got for that.”

The smoke and tattoo shops already in the building will remain put, Pemrick said, and a number of people have looked at the empty storefront that previously housed Chasers bar.

“We’re looking for more like a restaurant-bistro, baker-type,” she said. “We’re doing a lot of our own marketing.”

Pemrick said the building, which has 2,300 square feet available for rental, sold for $135,000. She said they were originally looking to rent space in it for her husband’s photo studio, but the price was right to buy.

“We got it for a steal,” she said. “We want to revive downtown. ... For us, it’s a price thing. We’re always looking for something we can fix up, but at a good price.”

Michael Coppinger, DRP executive director, said the top level of the building had been used as storage for at least a decade and that the main storefront had been vacant for at least a year and a half.

Pemrick said the color scheme was drawn from a nearby mural.

“We wanted to draw positive attention to the building and possibly make it a landmark, maybe draw people to it who want to take pictures,” Pemrick said.

The color scheme won approval Wednesday morning from the Architectural Review Board, which is charged with maintaining the historical character of downtown buildings.

“The Architectural Review Committee really took into consideration that it’s a wood structure that’s not in the continuous downtown, like Center Street, but a standalone building,” Coppinger said, adding that the Pemricks were also restoring some historical aspects of the facade.

“I think if it were the Richardson building, next to the Paramount, it would be a different situation,”he said. “You kind of have a funky-looking neighborhood unto itself over there.”